Singapore Airlines teams up with Alibaba

The news that Singapore Airlines is teaming up with Chinese internet giant Alibaba in a broad-encompassing agreement is quite interesting in the sense that it is a prime example of how travel and tech firms are converging over many fronts.

If Ryanair aims to be the "Amazon of Travel" (a path that other airlines are also trying to follow), this deal brings together two of the top brands in Asia in each of these spheres.

The SIA/Alibaba cooperation will be felt in areas such as loyalty programme integration, with members being able to make transfers between both companies respective programmes.+

But also in payments, where Alibaba is a very strong player, with its Alipay platform, and cloud computing (here Alibaba has a significant operation, just as Amazon does in its own turf too).

And SIA can bring quite a few assets to the partnership when it comes to logistics, another of the business areas that this partnership is going to focus on.

Will we see similar "marriages" between airlines and tech firms in other World regions?